The Fanatics/Chapter 20

Despite the apparent cheerfulness with which Mary Waters went her way in the Woods household, she was not entirely her own old self. There was an air about her not so much of sadness as of repression. She tried, as well as the circumstances of the household allowed, to be alone, although Nannie, feeling that brooding over her experiences must be unprofitable to her friend, attempted to correct this tendency in her. She was not always successful, for notwithstanding the pliancy of her disposition with those whom she loved, Bradford Waters' daughter had something of a will of her own, and there were times when she would elude Nannie's vigilance or repel her advances and wander away to indulge her moods to herself.

As the midsummer approached, she grew restless and preoccupied and often she would awake Nannie at night by starting up with cries of terror. But on being questioned, the only reply ​she would make was that she had been dreaming. Her dreams she would not tell at first.

Finally, the fancy so grew upon her that Nannie began to tax her with keeping something back. Mary continued reticent, but worn and weak, she at last surrendered to her friend's stronger nature.

"You've just got to tell me what it is, Mary Waters," said Nannie. "Something is troubling your mind, and you are troubling mine."

"But it's such a foolish thing, Nannie."

"I don't care. Folly is none the worse for being shared with some one."

"Do you believe in dreams?"

"I don't know, tell me yours, and I'll see. If I believe it means anything, I'll tell you, honestly, I will."

"Well, I have the vision of a black rider that continually comes to me in a sort of stupor that I experience between sleeping and waking. I cannot describe what I mean nor the feeling of it. But I know I am not asleep nor yet awake. The rider is always going along a dark road, and he comes up and holds out his arms to me. His face is covered, but I know him. It is the form of Robert Van Doren. But before I can touch his hand, he is gone, and when I call out after him, everything grows utterly black and I am awake with a terrible misgiving at my heart. ​Oh, I am afraid something has happened to him."

The girl seldom let herself out so fully, and Nannie saw that she was terribly wrought up.

"It is nothing, Mary," she said. "You've been brooding too much and it has made you nervous and sleepless. It will all come right if you try not to worry and wonder too much."

"I knew you would say that and I would rather not have told you."

"Don't be offended, dear. What I say is only for the best. It is what Tom would say to you if he were here."

"Yes, that's true, for he would understand no better than you, Nannie. There is with me something more than the dream—a feeling here," she pressed her hand to her breast, "a peculiar ache that isn't so much an ache as a premonition of one. You don't know what I mean, but I do."

"I think I almost understand. It's the same feeling that I have in my feet just before I step on the jack in your father's warehouse."

Mary looked up quickly to see if her friend was joking, but the eyes that met her own were perfectly serious, and though she could not vouch for the correctness of the likeness, she felt that somehow, Nannie understood.

"But," the latter pursued, "I never let the ​feeling in my foot get the better of me, and neither must you give way to that in your heart. It may be there, and it may seem something, but just keep on going."

"That's hardly necessary advice," smiled Mary. "It's the one thing that we have to do in life, keep on going. No matter how many presentiments you have, you've got to go on to their fulfillment. That's one thing that gives me the horrors at times until I want to shriek aloud—this unending forward movement. If one could only stop sometimes—but we can't."

"Don't, Mary, don't; there are some things that we must neither think nor talk about, some things that we must leave to a Higher Intelligence than ours."

"But suppose that one does think about them, that one cannot help it—that everything suggests these thoughts?"

"Oh, in that case, one goes out into the open air with me, walks down to the shop, and as she has a quick eye, helps me match some goods," and seeking to divert her mind from the gloomy thoughts that were taking possession of it, Nannie hurried Mary into her hat and out upon the streets.

The day was full of sunshine, but the air was limpid with the suggestion of rain, and a soft breeze blew up from the river. The town was ​humming and drowsing comfortably, and there was nothing in its appearance to indicate that just a little below the surface there smouldered volcanic fires of discontent and unrest. The whole place was the embodiment of peace. The blinds of the houses were closed to keep out the garish sunlight and the most active sign of life upon the resident streets was the young children playing in the gutters and on the pavements.

Something of the restfulness of the scene possessed Mary and for the time drove the clouds from her mind. The bright day and her fore bodings did not set well together. Could it be true that on such a morning as this with such a sky overhead men could be hating each other and seeking each others' lives? Her mind rejected the incongruity. After all, the darkest hour is just before dawn. She had been going through her dark hour and now all the brightness and beauty about her were but the promise of the better time coming. She went into the shop with Nannie stepping lightly and with a smile on her face.

Though poetry has told us that coming events cast their shadows before them, science has not troubled itself to deal largely with this subject of premonition, nor is it believable that those shadows are cast upon all hearts. But there is little doubt that to some there is given the added ​sorrow of feeling the approach of catastrophe some time before the fact. Call it presentiment or what you will, there are those who are capable of feeling disaster before it comes. Of these, was Mary Waters, and bright as her face had been when she entered the shop with Nannie the clouds had settled upon it again when she emerged.

"Let us walk up Main street," she said, and her companion agreed.

Nannie chatted on cheerfully because she had not noted Mary's return to her former depression. Had she only looked at her companion's gloomy face, her flow of talk would have been checked. Mary's eyes were fastened upon a knot of people surrounding a bulletin board in front of the Diurnal office.

"Something is wrong," said Mary suddenly, breaking in on her friend's talk.

"Why do you think so?" asked the surprised girl.

"Look at the crowd up there. Let us go and see."

Reluctantly Nannie complied and they were soon on the outskirts of the growing crowd. They could not get near enough to see the words on the board, but some one read aloud for the benefit of the late comers the words that made Mary pale with terror and turn hastily way. ​"John Morgan with his cavalry has crossed the river and is advancing into Ohio."

"John Morgan is in Ohio, and Robert is with him—my vision, the Black Rider." The disjointed words beat time to the throbbing of her heart. "John Morgan is in Ohio and Robert is with him."

The news spread like wildfire and already the town was alive with people hastening to the centre of intelligence. The drowsy summer quiet had gone from the streets as if by magic, and instead there were the shuffling of feet and the babble of many tongues. But Mary did not speak and Nannie gave her the sympathy of silence. Only when they were in the house again did she say, "I shall never question your feelings again. Never." Then with rare good sense, she left Mary to herself.

The shock, coming as it had, as a confirmation of her fears and holding in it unknown possibilities for trouble had a severe effect upon the girl. She was distressed for the safety of her lover, but not only that, for a new element had entered into her feelings. Heretofore, she had had little or no doubt as to the righteousness of her loyalty to Robert. But now it was a very different thing. He was no longer a brave man exiled and driven into the army of the enemy. He was now the invader of his own home and hers. ​As long as he fought on the soil of his father's state against invasion, he might still have her love and sympathy; but did he not, by this last act, forfeit both? Reasoning with a woman's narrow vision, she admitted his right to defend himself and those he loved against the government, but questioned his privilege to attack it. It is not to be denied that sentiment had much to do with Mary's point of view. In one rôle, Robert was the prince, in the other, the ogre, and she could not quite reconcile herself to sympathy with the ogre. It was rather a nice question to ask her to decide whether the right of defence did not carry with it the right of attack. There was something of horror in the picture she drew of him, riding a marauder over the fields of the state that had so long sheltered him. In her mind, the whole invasion was narrowed down to one man. It was not Morgan and his men—it was Robert—Robert, for whom she had left home, for whom she had suffered contempt. What did it matter to her that John Morgan was with him? What did it matter to her that he was one of two thousand? Then her trend of thought began to change. Had he not been forced to go where he was? She remembered his words to her father on that memorable night. "The Confederacy may thank you for another recruit!" Must he not do then as his comrades ​did? Would it not be cowardice in him to refuse to go where they wont? Would he do wrong consciously? She could not believe it. After all, she loved him and she would trust him blindly, whatever happened. The inevitable thing occurred. Her love triumphed. She need have asked herself no perplexing questions had she only begun with, "Is my love for him strong enough to overlook all shortcomings?" With Nannie in the same case, it would have been different. There would have boon no questions at all. She would merely have said, "Well, if he does it, it must be right," and gone on with a contented mind. Even Mary was happier for her decision, though she reached it after much doubt.

Dorbury heard of the rebel general's daring dash into Ohio with an astonishment that was only equalled by its anger and terror. There had been threats and rumors of some danger from Kentucky, but the possibility of it had been beyond belief. Now that the thing had really come, men stood aghast. Men who had scoffed before, now became suddenly serious. Men who had wavered in their allegiance, now spoke out boldly for the Union when their homes were menaced. On every side was the cry "The Home Guards, the Home Guards," and old men, middle-aged men and beardless youths went ​flocking into the armory. "Be sure," said some, "if he dares cross into Ohio, there are more behind him, and it means that they intend to overwhelm the state!" Others said, "They will burn Cincinnati, strike here, unless we can check them, march on and destroy the capital."

On any corner, sane men, fanatics and demagogues could secure audiences to listen to their oratory, in which they adjured their hearers to rise in their might and drive the invader from their sacred soil.

There were some men in the town who smiled and added, "It is a feint, let Morgan come. He will not come far." There were not many of them. There were others who gathered behind the closed blinds of Stephen Van Doren's house to talk of this new development. To them Van Doren spoke confidentially. "I deplore this move," he said. "It will take away sympathy from the cause of the South, although Morgan is only doing what Lincoln has done in the South. It is a sorry matter all through, for we have been plunged into a war that might have been averted by able statesmanship. If worst comes to worst, we have only our government to thank, and yet it is a bad thing, for nothing will do more to cement a feeling of clannishness in the North and give these fanatics something to point to than this same attempt to fight the devil with fire."

​Among all the crowding men, the believers in different creeds, walked Bradford Waters like an Elijah among the prophets of Baal. The news was to him as the battle-smoke to the nostrils of the war-horse. He seemed like one inspired, and it was as if the things that he had longed for had been done. There was a look of exaltation on his face, but his was an emotion too deep for words, though none who saw him needed speech of him.

In her bedroom, his daughter sat staring silently out of her window, not thinking—hardly dreaming—and so night fell on Dorbury.